Gabriele Tarquini at a loss to explain Lada troubles in Vila Real

Gabriele Tarquini will start 17th for both of today’s races at the Portuguese street circuit, after missing a lot of running in practice due to a vibration on his Lada Vesta, which was only just resolved before qualifying.

The Italian, who won last time out at the manufacturer’s home race at Moscow Raceway, has written off the race weekend as a test session after troubles throughout Friday and Saturday.

“We had a lot of trouble in Free Practice 0 with a problem with a big vibration which we did not resolve until qualifying,” said Tarquini to TouringCarTimes. “So I haven’t had a lot of laps, I completely missed Free Practice 2, and I had traffic on my two attempts, so that’s it.

“We solved the problem, but we don’t know how as we changed many things together, so we probably didn’t have a great set-up either, so it’s a combination of factors.”

The 54-year-old says the aim now is focus on working on the set-up of the car, both with the compensation weight that Lada are carrying, and to identify the vibration issue which plagued him in qualifying.

“The weekend is almost gone,” he said. “Qualifying is very important here. Our overall performance is not fantastic, but Nicky did a fantastic lap time, as it’s the first time we carry 70kg and we have no experience with carrying this weight, as during the winter we never thought we’d be running this weight.

“I will use this like a test, to try and discover what the problem was during free practice and try some different things to get more experience with 70kg, as in normal circumstances it will be very difficult to score points as you can’t make any places at the standing start here, and I don’t want to be risking the car trying to overtake anyone for 15th place.”